Web Surveys 101

Boosting survey response rates is a major concern for a lot of surveyors. With the help of online survey tools, increasing response rates is easier than with paper survey methods. Why? Because it's easier to know who responded to an online email invitation than a mailer, so you know who to send a second (or third) invite reminder to; and it's cheaper than mailing additional surveys. I'm sure everyone agrees that online surveys are cheaper than paper surveys, so let's not spend too much time dwelling on the cost. While I cannot speak for all web survey software applications, Cvent automatically will remove respondents from your reminder email. There is no need to match up your invitation list to your respondent list. In Cvent Web Surveys, this is even true for anonymous surveys. This is very important; nothing annoys me more than when I get a second, third or fourth survey invitation for an online questionnaire I completed after the first email. I want to stress here that the respondent remains anonymous to the surveying organization, even though the Cvent survey management software knows who began the survey.

The number one tip I have for sending multiple email survey invitations is to not send the same email each time. While I've mentioned in the past that different people may open each reminder, and that's part of the reason why reminder emails are important, some of those people are going to be the same. If the email didn't work the first time, why do you think it will work the second. Resist the urge here to include language that rushes or pressures the email recipient. You don't want to make the respondent feel as if they're being coerced into completing their survey, they will not provide honest feedback.

Second tip of the day for reminder emails is the subject line. If you split tested the subject line in the original invite, which one worked better? Why do you think it worked better? Take what you learned from the first invite and apply it to the second. Some people argue not to include "Reminder" anywhere in the subject line for reminders, but I think that's a call that's up to you.

Last reminder for this post is your emails should have some consistency. Don't go over board making them look and read different from the first email. Keep the same email template, from name and from email address. You want them to remember you've asked them before and your graphical layout will help jog their memory.